Friday 2 May 2008

David Carson

David Carson is an American Graphic Designer. He is well known for his innovative magazine designs and his experimentation with typography. He was born on September 8th 1955 .and studied Sociology at University. His jobs before becoming a Graphic Designer were a sociology teacher and a professional surfer, after that he became Art director for a magazine called Ray Gun. His layouts featured distortions or mixes of 'vernacular' typefaces and fractured imagery, rendering them almost illegible. Indeed, his maxim of the 'end of print' questioned the role of type in the emergent age of digital design, following on from CALIFORNIA NEW WAVE and coinciding with experiments at the CRANBROOK ACADEMY OF ART . In the later 1990s he shifted from 'surf subculture' to corporate work for Nike, LEVIS and Citibank.



Carson owns 2 studios one in New York and one in South Carolina.

Clients
  • American Express

  • Budweiser

  • Kodak Lycra

  • Mercedes Benz

  • MTV

  • Nissan

  • Quicksilver
  • Suzuki

  • Warner Bros

RAY BAN



Ray ban sunglasses, called orbs."o" always had to be one of the glasses. For Ray Ban sunglasses new launch in Australia. A visual pun, why not? The Orbs products provide the O of the name. Agency: Young & Rubicam.The idea worked across posters, print ads and postcards



Carson's use of visual imagery of typography works because although its simple, it's bold and easy to understand and also is aesthetically pleasing. His use of typography states what the advertisement is for and what Orbs are due to the glasses being the O. His use of different typefaces gives it a warm, fun approach to it, which would relate to it's audience. Although the text isn't positioned straight or evenly it still sends the message across and is very easy to read.









Hollywood


Ad in print magazine for the aspen design conference. theme was "Hollywood" Since 1981 Carson has attended the International Design Conference in Aspen. In 1995 he joined the board of directors. In 1996 he made an effort to bring together various different camps in American graphics, personally inviting designers Ed Fella, Martin Venezky, Jeff Keedy and Rudy Vanderlans (the only one to decline.)

Although this work is black and white it's use of typography makes the statement. It looks as if Carson has screen printed it due to its texture created by the black dots and marks used in the Ad. The word Hollywood has been written with capital and non capital letters in a grammatically wrong way which makes the word look distorted and looks as if it's a number of words. This still makes it stand out. But to undserstand what it read would take a little longer than reading it as if it was in either all upper case or all lower case letters. This makes you want to read the rest of the poster to see what its all about.

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